Hello and welcome to GYGO! It feels so great to say that again. I’m Joesph, your very angry games journalist, and I’m here to discuss our community’s awful relationship with harassment.

ASMR Star Targeted for Not Lying to Fans

Professional streamer and cosplayer, Amouranth, has spoken out about the harassment she’s been facing recently. Amouranth is known for near daily streams that regularly run up to 12 hours. This schedule allows an often intimate view of her life. Of course, as so often happens with female personalities on the internet, this intimacy has lead a vocal minority of her fan base to a sense of entitlement. In the most recent case these “fans” have been passing around old pictures of Amouranth and suggesting that somehow she has been able to hide a live-in fiancé from her lengthy streams. She denies doing so (and it’s unclear how that would even work if she did), but the issue is in no way whether or not Amouranth chose to keep small piece of privacy in an incredibly public life. The issue is that the entitlement people feel towards her personality has lead to doxing and harassment for Amouranth, the specifics of which have been covered by Syfy Wire. Amouranth hasn’t given up streaming, however—and to be honest is probably online right now if you want to check out her stream and help contribute to a healthy community of viewers.

Allegations of abuse have rocked the Final Fantasy XIV community after over 15 women came forward to speak about their experience with Oldbear Stormborn, the former editor in chief of The Moogle Post. The Moogle Post is one of the FFXIV community’s largest fan sites, with over 30,000 monthly visitors, and maintains an unclear relationship with Oldbear. Steven Messner covered this story in detail over at PC Gamer, and it’s worth a read for those who can stomach first-hand accounts of emotional abuse. For everyone else, I’ll say the allegations include a man in his 30s preying on women as young as 18, pressuring them into sexual situations, and using his status and authority in the FFXIV community to prevent his victims from speaking up or being believed when they do.

That last part is the crux of this story. Many people around Oldbear refused to believe the women who spoke up about their experiences. The reported behavior largely took place in discord groups and fan channels connected to The Moogle Post, or a popular free company (FFXIV‘s guild equivalent), that Oldbear was a high ranking member of. These reports illustrate a man using his authority to repeatedly convince the people around him the allegations should be waved off. However, that authority only works because of our culture’s bias towards disbelieving women, often relying on ingrained clichés like, “she’s just stirring up drama,” or “she’s just pissed because things didn’t work out.”

It’s important to note these women are reporting harassment and abuse surrounding something that they love. I know that I have gotten into MMORPGs as a distraction during some of the hardest times of my life—many of these reports reflect that. Multiple women accusing Oldbear Stormborn described themselves as emotional vulnerable while in contact with him: whether through age, divorce, or just plain loneliness. Stories like this remind us that even the things that protect us from the shittiest parts of life can contain shitty parts themselves, which is why we have to do our best to keep them out anyway.

Luckily this week hasn’t been all harassment. Overwatch released their newest character, Wrecking Ball, on PTR. I only got to play the murder rodent a couple of times so far, but I already love him! Hopefully this means Blizzard has finally embraced the silliness of Overwatch‘s concept and will soon roll out the cats with jetpacks.

overwatch: stop asking us for lore we’re giving you a new hero it’s a hamster inside a giant mechaball just go shoot people jesus

A genderless eldritch beast bound to mortal flesh. Interests include games, gardening, magical realism, and the complete restructuring of America’s political and economic systems. Once designed their own Full Metal Alchemist style transmutation circle for the weeb cred.